Hello all,
I know some of you will be surprised with the subject of this messages
but, yes, it says what it says.
I haven't had enough time (and my slow typing speed doesn't help either)
to more actively participate in these past few days discussions about
bugs, if they are showstoppers or cosmetic bugs, if the latest release
should have happened, or not, if the programmers are doing this or that
when we would like them to do that or this, etc., etc.
Aside of not having time, it is always difficult to discuss about bugs.
What may be a showstopper for some may just be cosmetic for others, and
we must all accept that. I, for example, don't care about IMAP because I
don't use IMAP accounts and I don't foresee using it in the near future.
But I can fully understand that those of you that need/use it may be
upset if it doesn't work as it should.
Anyway, for a number of reasons that I will not explain now (may take
too long to explain) I have decided to look for an alternative for TB.
Since looking for alternatives and evaluating them will certainly take
time and I don't have that much (as I have said before), and since I
believe many (some?) of you are seriously considering leaving TB and
moving to another email client and maybe have already evaluated some, is
why I would kindly ask from you to advise me if you know of a package
that will allow me to do most of the things I do with TB now and that
have become essential for my work.
OK, these are some of the things the alternative package should have or
should allow me to do (in no specific order):
- It should allow to create multiple POP accounts and allow me to
set different time period for each for checking incoming email. With
different identity for each and different templates for new, reply,
forward and print for each account. It should also allow me to set a
different Address Book for each account, which, in turn, requires that I
can create and use as many ABs as I wish. I currently use 20 accounts.
- It should allow the creation of a folder tree with subfolders to any
level of deepness and the possibility of setting different identities
for each folder or subfolder. These, the different identities, I use for
example for mailing lists and newsgroups. I may have different accounts
for different news servers and then different identities for each
newsgroup. I currently have 540 folders plus some 80 Virtual Folders.
- Since I have already mentioned ABs, aside of being able to create and
use as many ABs as needed, it should allow the creation of groups and
assigning AB entries to more than one group. Also, it should be possible
to define new, reply and fwd templates for AB entries and groups.
- And talking about templates, it should allow account, AB (entry and
group) and folder templates. Yes, folder templates may be (or seem)
'dangerous' but I do use them quite a bit. Ah!, of course it should
allow QTs (Quick Templates) and the nesting of templates and QTs (I'll
give an example later).
- Obviously, when talking about templates I should not forget about
Macros and Regexp. A range of macros similar to TB would be ideal.
- I should be able to set message deletion criteria at folder level,
with the possibility of moving messages to a different folder which,
together with the 'Keep messages for N days' option will allow me to
archive 'old' messages.
- Before I finish with folders, it should allow me to set View Modes and
threading mode at folder level. I currently use 17 view modes and in
most folders I always thread by Reference which, to me, is the 'natural'
way to thread.
- It should allow the use of different viewers and editors, although I
basically use PTV and MicroEd. If only one editor is offered, I would
prefer it is as similar as possible to MicroEd (I love it).
- It should allow different ways of searching. Like with Message Finder,
Quick Search, VF filtering and quick filtering with Alt+click.
- And since I have just mentioned VFs again, and before I forget, it
should allow the creation of normal (physical) folders, Virtual Folders
_and_ Watch folders (also called Chat folders). Watch folders are almost
a must for me. Since I am subscribed to a number of mailing lists and
newsgroups, when I am specifically interested in a thread I mark it to
Watch Replies in an specific Watch folder so I will not miss any of the
replies. Common folders and VFs would be a plus, but I could always use
a dummy account for this purpose like I did before they were included in
TB.
- Colour Groups or similar functionality. They are a must for me and I
currently use 17. I should be able to assign them manually or with
filters. Being able to assign colour groups (or similar) to folders
would be a real plus. The actual colours are not as important as the
fact as being able to just see a selected group of folders by selecting
a tab at the bottom of the folder tree.
- Sounds. What can I say about sounds? I use account, filter and folder
sounds. Different sounds alert me if I have received a message from a
group of selected people I may have/want to reply immediately, or if I
have received an invoice, or a license key for a client, or a fax (the
fax software in my server fwds faxes by email), etc.
- Mail Ticker. I only use Mail Ticker for a few and not too busy
folders, but an equivalent or better functionality would be desirable.
- Customisation. My requirements about this are not too many. Being able
to select and use my own set of icons is almost a must for my tired ayes
(I love my 'yellowish' icons). Other than that, I would like to be able
to customise at least RMB context menus to adapt them to my needs and, in
general, remove the options I hardly use and that, when needed, I can
access from main menus. I hardly use keyboard shortcuts because I am
mouse oriented, but for over 10 years I have used 'Space' to mark a
message as read and 'Enter' to jump to next unread. So, if these are not
the defaults I would need a way of assigning them.
- More VF requirements before I forget. They should allow more than just
simple filtering/searching like on colour groups, or flags, etc. I use
some 'complex' filtering even using AND and OR blocks like to show me
messages I marked for action, or for reply, etc. in different VFs if
they are less than 10 days old, or between 10 and 30, or older than 30.
Due to the many newsletters I get, many of them daily, I use VFs to look
for certain keyword combinations in different VFs so I can easily look,
and perhaps read, those newsletter I am really interested in.
- And last but not least, Filters. I should not forget about filters. I
do use quite a number of filters and sub-filters of all kinds: Incoming,
Outgoing, Read, Replied and Selective Download. And even Common Filters
that can be shared between accounts although, as you may know, common
sub-filters don't work properly yet.
I use filters, like many of you, for some simple tasks like moving
messages to folders or assigning colour groups, etc. But I also take
advantage of the the many options and actions (that TB filters allow)
for some more 'complex' or 'sophisticated' operations, some in
combination with templates, QTs, ABs, etc. Let me give you a couple of
examples so you understand what kind of alternative I'm looking for.
1.- One still quite simple, but not easily doable with other clients (I
think), is to assign different colour groups to messages I send when
they are being sent. I do this by typing a two letter keyword in the
Comments: header that Outgoing filters will look at.
2.- When talking about sounds I mentioned that when I get a message from
group of selected people I get a special sound because I want to read
them ASAP and perhaps reply. I do this with an Incoming filter that
moves the message to an Special Inbox (the sound is selected in this
folder) so that I only have to go to one place to find these 'important'
messages.
Now, when I read one of these messages, I may do several things:
a) Nothing aside of reading it. Then when I manually mark it as
read with Space (I mark messages as read when I have read them) a
Read filter moves the message to its appropriate folder.
b) Read it and flag it. In this case Read filters assign an
specific colour group and move it to an Action/Reply folder so I
can easily find at a later time.
c) Reply immediately. In this case, my reply is moved to the
person's specific folder by an Outgoing filter and the original
message is moved to the same folder by a Replied filter.
d) Reply and flag it. My reply is moved by Outgoing filter and
original message is moved to Actions/Reply folder by Read filters.
BTW, this Actions/Reply folder is the source for the VFs I
mentioned earlier that show me if messages are less than 10 days
old, etc.
When later, some times days later, I reply or take an action on
messages in the Actions/reply folder, my replies are sorted by
Outgoing filters and the original message by Replied, just the same
than above.
3.- I receive well above 100 web queries everyday in an account specific
for these. They are from people requesting information about some of
our products, or an evaluation CD-ROM or who have downloaded one of our
free products or plugins. Till the advent of NFS I had to process them
individually, this is what I do now.
First of all, I have a set of VFs looking into Inbox. Each of the
VFs 'looks' in the query form for one of our products. This way, by
just looking at the folder tree I can easily see how many downloads
for each product we had that day.
Second, my first manual action, I mark all messages as read by
Ctrl+M or right clicking on the Inbox and selecting Mark all
messages as read.
Third, my second manual action, Ctrl+F or right click and select
Re-Filter and select Read Filters only and OK.
The 100+ messages are processed by my 'Queries' Read filter which
does the following:
- If the sender's email address is in one of several address book
groups, nothing.
- If the address is not in one of these groups, then an automatic
reply using a template is created. What the template does, aside
setting up headers is, using Regexp, look at the Country
specified in the query form and call (%Qinclude) different QTs
depending on the country. These country specific QTs may in turn
include further QTs depending on other fields of the form (this
is what I call nested templates and QTs) so that each auto reply
is 'customised' for different countries and/or product
downloaded.
In both cases, queries (messages) are moved a Processed folder
where I keep them for several days.
Finally, once the 100+ messages are re-filtered and the proper auto
replies are placed in Outbox all I have to do is click send. So,
with only three simple manual actions or clicks I can process these
100+ messages or umpteen thousand if they were so many.
And that is basically all. There are more things that I do that I would
certainly like to do with my new email client like, taking advantage of
POPFile headers (I use POPFile not only for spam or ham, I have also
trained POPFile to differentiate several languages) some of my reply
templates can automagically set the language for a reply and the proper
spell checker and also the salutation and signature. But these are
perhaps 'minor' issues and this message would become just too long.
So, if you have taken the time to read up to here, I would first like to
thank you for your patience. And second, ask from you that if you happen
to know of, or happen to find, another email client that could be an
alternative to TB for me and that could make my work almost as easy and
efficient as TB does now, I would be very very grateful if you let me
know.
One last thing, in case you happen to know. Moons ago there was a
discussion in this list about 'irony' and 'sarcasm' but it isn't still
clear to me what the difference is. Do you know? I ask because I am not
sure if I wrote and ironic or sarcastic message :) In any case, it may
help some of you understand why I may seem to you as quite tolerant
with some TB bugs, the programmers, release issues, etc.
Thanks for your time :)
One more last thing. I don't want to start any further discussion with
this message, so don't bother to reply unless you really think you can
point a real alternative for me ;-)
--
Best regards,
Miguel A. Urech (El Escorial - Spain)
Using The Bat! v3.62.07 on Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 2
Winamp Playing: Ken Navarro - You Are Everything (Smoothjazz.Com - The
worlds best Smooth Jazz - Live From Monterey Bay)
________________________________________________________
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